“In the logs. Every sawyer expects to find some nails when he’s sawin’ maple. Especially in a sugar country. They was drove in to hold sap buckets. But a man don’t expect to find ’em in beech and birch—and he don’t expect to find brand-new ten-penny nails, neither. The saw-filer’s tearin’ his hair. If it keeps on we won’t have a saw to cut with in the big mill. You know what a nail’ll do to a saw, Mr. Ashe.”
“Why doesn’t the sawyer keep his eyes open for them?” Jim snapped.
“Keep his eyes open! Mr. Ashe, before he puts a log on the carriage now he goes over it from end to end. You can’t see a nail that’s countersunk so the head’s half an inch in.”
“The way you say that sounds as if you meant something. Out with it.”
“I mean,” said Nelson, doggedly, “that it looks to me as if somebody was plantin’ them nails so’s we’d saw into ’em. I mean it looks to me like somebody sneaked in here and tampered with things after we get through inspectin’. I mean that the things that’s happened in this mill couldn’t ’a’ happened without bein’ helped to happen.” John Beam nodded his head in agreement.
“That’s nonsense,” Jim said, emphatically.
“Maybe it is. Maybe a crazy man’s doin’ it. But, Mr. Ashe, it’s bein’ done. I know it as well as if I’d seen the feller doin’ it.”
“How about the watchmen?”
“All of ’em worked for us in the old mills. ’Tain’t none of them. I’d take my Bible oath on that.”
Jim sat silent a moment, scowling at the floor.